Art Of Engaging The Audience During A Presentation

I have recently joined a new organization. Recently, we had a day-long business induction at the office. It was being conducted by various leaders from different business lines. While undergoing one of the presentations, I observed one interesting point which can be a hack to engage someone in the meeting, especially when it is happening remotely.

So, all the new joiners were sitting in a training room and the induction program began. Most of the sessions were presented by people from remote locations via Teams. I could observe that very few of us were focused and paying attention to the presentation. Most people were pretty distracted and were scrolling on their mobile phones and laptops, I was also one of them. Until one of the presenters asked us some cross-questions relevant to the presentation topic to make the meeting more interactable. As soon as the questions were asked, everyone suddenly paid attention to the projector screen. One of the ladies from our room stood up and shared her opinion on the questions asked. Now everyone was thinking about the answers in their head and trying to participate in the discussion. Overall, it was an active collaborative discussion with everybody in the room.

This made me think and realize how some small gestures or activities can trigger audience engagement. We can do this in the form of playing some fun games in between the sessions. Or by asking some simple questions relevant to the topic of discussion and asking members to share their opinions. This way, the presentation or meeting can be more collaborative and interactive.

Back in my higher school days, my then Physics teacher used to engage us in the same manner but in a very strict way. We all used to be in terror during his lectures because he used to ask some tricky questions randomly to anyone in the classroom and at any time. Hardly anyone escaped to get away from him. And if someone was not able to give a valid answer, then the humiliation was on his way in front of the whole class. But when I saw it down the line, this made us very attentive during the lecture and sharpened our concepts.